If you need rankings and audits to keep running on their own: SE Ranking. It is a monthly subscription, and what you are paying for is measurement that happens while nobody is watching.
FREE · NO ACCOUNT · NO SALES CALL
Currently watching the facts used by SE Ranking vs Screaming Frog. We send one email only when a published fact or calculation used here changes.
If you need to crawl a site deeply, when you decide to: Screaming Frog. One licence per person, renewed yearly, and a free version that stops at 500 URLs so you can find out whether you need the paid one before paying.
If you are trying to work out which is cheaper: neither answer is available. One is billed per month for an account, the other per year for a person. The figures below are both quoted as the publisher writes them, and we do not convert one into the other.
Tracking that has to keep running: rankings measured daily, audits repeated every month, and a record that survives the person who set it up.
Walk away if: You need one deep crawl and then nothing for six months. You would pay for daily tracking you are not reading, and the meter does not pause.
SE Ranking: The headline rate is the annual-commitment rate, and the page shows it first. Paying month to month costs $129.00 instead of $103.20 on Core, and $279.00 instead of $223.20 on Growth. The publisher states annual plans are billed upfront. Checked Aug 22, 2026 on the vendor's page.
One person who crawls deeply and occasionally, on sites large enough that 500 URLs runs out, and who already has a machine that can hold the crawl.
Walk away if: You need rankings watched while nobody is at the keyboard. It crawls when you run it; it does not measure anything on its own.
You have not decided what you are measuring. Both of these will produce more data than you can act on, and neither will tell you which number matters for your site.
Publisher evidence and limits are used where they support the choice; unsupported claims stay out of the recommendation.
Which option fits this buyer, using only what these vendors publish?
◇ The answer holds for the source-backed evidence this guide names and compares — nothing beyond it.
◇ The answer section gives conditional picks from source-backed vendor evidence, even though no computed comparison graphic is drawn yet.
◇ The comparison table adds real cost, free tier, billing / transaction limits, plan limits, capability fit and usage limits where vendor evidence supports it.
· Every dimension this decision needs has source-backed evidence on this page.
│ The answer changes when the buyer condition moves onto a different observed dimension, limit, billing unit, or proven breakpoint.
Changes the answer when invoices, payments, transactions or card volume create operating cost.
Supported by the vendor evidence used on this page.Changes the answer when the cheapest plan excludes the limit, tier or capability the buyer needs.
Supported by the vendor evidence used on this page.Changes the answer when the buyer needs a specific job done, not just the cheapest subscription.
Supported by the vendor evidence used on this page.Changes the answer when crawls, keywords, contacts, sends, seats or projects hit a published cap.
Supported by the vendor evidence used on this page.The headline rate is the annual-commitment rate, and the page shows it first. Paying month to month costs $129.00 instead of $103.20 on Core, and $279.00 instead of $223.20 on Growth. The publisher states annual plans are billed upfront.
Publisher fact checked Aug 22, 2026View at Seranking ↗Official sourceThe free version crawls 500 URLs. The publisher states the maximum a licence can crawl depends on the memory and storage you allocate on your own machine — the invoice does not set that ceiling.
Publisher fact checked Aug 22, 2026View at Co ↗Official sourceBoth of these are called SEO tools, and the question that brings people here treats them as alternatives. They are not sold as alternatives. One is a subscription to work that keeps happening; the other is a licence to a program you run yourself.
That difference decides the invoice before any feature does. It also decides what happens when you stop paying: a subscription that lapses stops measuring, a licence that lapses stops opening.
This is why there is no cheaper one here. A monthly subscription and an annual per-user licence answer different questions, and a single price column would invent a comparison neither vendor makes.
The honest way to read the table is to decide first whether you are buying continuous measurement or a tool someone opens. Once that is settled, only one of these two is in the running, and the price question becomes easy.
Nobody owns the follow-up. A crawl that surfaces 4,000 issues and a rank tracker that reports daily are both worthless if no one is scheduled to read them.
You wanted a single number to compare them on. There isn't one — and a page that gives you one is inventing it.
Which one is cheaper?
The question has no answer as asked, and that is the useful part. Screaming Frog is $279 per licence per year. SE Ranking's Growth plan is $279.00 per month paid monthly. Same headline number, twelve months apart — and turning one into the other means inventing a figure neither publisher prints.
Do they do the same thing?
They overlap on site auditing and separate everywhere else. SE Ranking tracks rankings daily and audits on a monthly quota; Screaming Frog crawls when you run it and does not track anything between runs. Teams that use both are not being redundant.
What does Screaming Frog's free version actually cover?
500 URLs, and the publisher says the paid ceiling depends on the memory and storage you allocate on your own machine rather than on the licence. If your site is under 500 pages, the free version may be the whole answer.
● Official vendor and pricing pages checked 2026-08-22.
Visible claims keep their source and check date; Advisor calculations stay marked separately.
